


Path of the Righteous Man

by dracusfyre



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Dark Steve Rogers, Horror, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-01 21:53:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12713661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre
Summary: This was meant to be for the 2017 Stucky Scary Bang but I didn't finish in time (sad trombone).  For the prompt: Steve and Bucky are serial killers and lovers on the run from the law, when they come across a group of criminals called the Avengers.





	Path of the Righteous Man

These are things that everyone knows:

_Steve Rogers has always hated bullies._

_Steve Rogers and James “Bucky” Barnes had been friends since childhood._

_Steve Rogers became Captain America to save the world from the threat of Nazis and to be a beacon of inspiration for Americans in a time of darkness._

_Captain America died trying to rescue Bucky Barnes, but not before freeing five hundred prisoners of war and exposing the threat of Hydra to the world._

These are the things that only two living people know:

_Steve Rogers killed his first person at the age of seventeen._

_Steve Rogers and James “Bucky” Barnes had been lovers since they turned eighteen._

_Captain America may have died rescuing Bucky Barnes, but Steve Rogers didn’t._

\--------------------

“That is just unnecessary,” Steve scowled, hands tightening on his coffee.  “What an asshole.”

Bucky looked up from his phone and glanced over his shoulder to see what Steve was talking about.  At the counter, a man in expensive designer jeans and a sport jacket was yelling at the cashier, waving his coffee around and getting it all over the counter; the cinnamon-nutmeg smell of his pumpkin whatever was strong in Bucky’s nose even from across the café.  Every time the cashier tried to speak up, the man would just interrupt and Bucky could hear him demanding the manager. “Yeah,” Bucky agreed, turning back to his phone.  “But maybe he’s just having a bad day.  You can’t kill everyone who was asshole at some point or another, we wouldn’t have the time.  Besides, we’ve already got a project, remember?” Bucky gestured with his phone to a pair of cops standing on the street corner with cups of coffee steaming in their hands, smiling about something as they kept a sharp eye on the pedestrians.

“I know.  But maybe I should say something-”

Bucky’s hand shot out and grabbed Steve’s wrist as he started to get up. “Can’t attract attention to ourselves, sweetheart.  If you wanna have a little talk with him, wait until he’s not in a crowded coffee shop, yeah?”

“Fine,” Steve said grumpily.  “You’re right.” He took the hand off his wrist and kissed the palm.  Under the leather glove the metal was cold and hard and the pressure of Steve’s lips was too light for Bucky to feel, but it was the thought that counted. 

***

The first time was an accident.   When Steve didn’t show for a movie Bucky followed the sound of a ruckus and found Steve on the ground with some creep kicking him in the stomach.   Bucky didn’t think, he just grabbed a rock and threw it at the guy’s head.  It wasn’t a big rock, but the impact was enough to make him stumble forward, trip over Steve’s curled up body, and hit the corner of the dumpster with a loud clang.  When he fell down, he didn’t get back up again.

After Bucky helped Steve to his feet, feeling his ribs to make sure they weren’t broken, he went to go look at the guy, though as soon as the man hit the ground Bucky had known he was dead.  Pigeon, cat, or man, the uncanny stillness of death was unmistakable.  His brown eyes were sightless and staring, blood bright red and oozing slowly across the brown bricks of the ally.

“Shit,” Bucky breathed. “I didn’t mean to…”       

 Steve joined him, dabbing at the blood coming out of his nose. “He was a bully, Bucky.  He came after me because I told him to stop hassling a girl on her way home from work.  He’d been following her for over six blocks! The poor girl was terrified.”

Bucky stared down at where the blood was slowly approaching his shoes, drifting lazily as it seeped into a puddle.  He had the crazy impulse to step in it, get it on the soles of his shoes and leave bloody footprints around the body.  _I was here. I did this._  

He shivered at the thought and looked away. “So what are you saying? He had it coming?”

Steve lifted his chin to look Bucky in the eye. “I’m saying you probably saved my life.  C’mon, let’s get outta here.”

“Yeah.”  They left out of the other end of the alley, Bucky giving Steve a lift over the fence before vaulting over himself, the loud rattle of the chain links making Bucky’s muscles tense up.  For lack of anything better to do they ended up going to the movie after all, though Bucky could tell that neither one of them were really watching it.

***

At about ten the cops started walking their beat, throwing their cups in the trash and strolling down the sidewalk, indifferent to the people that had to scramble to get out of their way.  Some people crossed the street because these cops had a reputation; that always earned them a hard stare but for now the cops just kept going, like predators that weren’t hungry enough yet.

“Oh man, _another_ fast food chain? Jesus.” Bucky broke Steve out of his thoughts, gesturing to a sign going up on a storefront that was currently under construction.  “I’ve eaten there before, the food is _terrible._ I don’t see how they can afford to keep franchising.”

“I don’t know, Buck,” Steve said vaguely.  The cops had pulled a young man to the side, hands buried in his pockets while his eyes darted around warily.  After a moment he produced a driver’s license, shoulders still hunched defensively.  One cop kept him occupied while the other called in his information.  After a few minutes they waved him away and he fled eagerly.  Steve watched the kid go and turned his attention back to Bucky. “Would you prefer another hipster bakery?”

“Fast food joints always smell like desperation and heart attacks.  Hipster bakeries may be pretentious but I bet they pay their workers better.”  Steve smiled as Bucky tightened his scarf around his neck as they kept walking.  Bucky always felt the cold more than Steve; Steve tried to argue maybe it was the skinny jeans and stylish coats that Bucky preferred, but Bucky always said _or maybe it’s the metal arm,_ Steve, _at least I don’t insist on dressing like a grandpa._

They got caught by the light, separated from the cops that they were trailing by angry morning commuter traffic, the sound of honking and loud music and rumbling engines combining into the unintelligible cacophony that was the soundtrack to Brooklyn.   Neither Steve nor Bucky were concerned when their targets turned a corner and went out of sight; the cops always walked the same route every day, so they would catch up with them a few blocks down.  The light changed and they were starting to cross when a young man bumped into Bucky with a muttered _sorry._

A sudden grin split Bucky’s face.  “Hey, don’t run off,” he said, hooking his arm around the young man’s neck and pulling him close.  “At least, not before you give me my wallet back.” Steve came up on the other side of the man, cornering him against Bucky and blocking anyone’s view of him in a pincer movement that was almost habitual.

The young man stiffened, realizing he was trapped. “I don’t want any trouble,” he muttered, slapping Bucky’s wallet into his waiting palm. 

“Can you believe it, Steve? This guy’s got skills I haven’t seen since the war.”

Steve looked at the pickpocket with interest.  He was an unremarkable youth, shorter than Steve and Bucky by a good six inches, with dirty-blonde hair and a crooked nose, his body solid and compact.  “You mean those kids in Paris?”

 “Yeah. What’s your name, kid?”

 If anything, the guy’s shoulders got tenser. “You’re gonna want to let me go,” he said in a low voice, and Bucky stopped walking in surprise.

“This one’s got claws,” Bucky said, still amused. Steve could see the glint of light off the knife the kid was digging into Bucky’s ribs.

“And backup,” a cold female voice said from behind Steve, and then there was the unmistakable feeling of the cold metal barrel of a gun against the back of Steve’s neck.  “Let him go.”

 At Bucky’s questioning look, Steve nodded carefully.  With a shrug he let the kid go and in what seemed like a split second he disappeared into the crowd. A moment later, the gun disappeared too.

“Well, that was interesting.”  Steve looked around but there wasn’t a trace of either of them.

“Yeah.  I didn’t see much of the one that got the drop on you but she had red hair and definitely knew was she was doing with that gun.  Are we going to let them go?”

“Of course not.” 

***

A few miles outside the town of Azzano, Steve cradled Bucky in his lap and watched the factory burn, belching black smoke into the night sky.   The sharp smell of burning chemicals stung Steve’s nose, but he was grateful that it covered the smell of burning bodies.  They could still feel the heat from the fire on them though they were well past the tree line, but with the way Bucky was shivering Steve didn’t want to go any farther.  Finally the sounds of people coming to investigate the chaos became too loud to ignore, so Steve urged Bucky to his feet.

“I’m sorry, but we gotta find someplace safe,” he said in an urgent whisper, holding Bucky’s weight effortlessly as he tucked his arm under Bucky’s shoulders.

“We should go back to base,” Bucky pointed out, looking over his shoulder at where the escaped prisoners had headed west, back towards the front lines, captured tanks rumbling along with them like grating earthbound thunder.  Steve didn’t follow his gaze and just stubbornly turned them south and east.

“No more Army,” he said, jaw tightening.  “It’s just me and you now, like it’s always been.”

“What are we going to do, Steve?” Bucky’s voice sounded a little hysterical but he kept limping along at Steve’s side, strides becoming a little bit stronger as they kept walking. “Go on vacation? You get a sudden urge to see the Mediterranean?”

“No.  We’re going to find the guy that did this to you and have a little talk about the proper treatment of prisoners of war.”  Bucky knew what it meant when he said _little talk_ in that tone of voice, and the surge of eager, bloodthirsty rage in his heart surprised him as he imagined the man’s piggy little face contorted in fear.

He forced out a laugh.  “Don’t know how long you’ve been over here, pal, but I have to say that there’s a hell of a lot of people around that deserve a little talking to.”

The body against his may have been strange and new, but the set of Steve’s jaw was as familiar as Bucky’s own.  He was glaring into the darkness like he could defeat Hydra and Nazi Germany with a stern look, just like when he planned to save all of the underdogs in Brooklyn with sheer determination and a nuanced view of the value of human life.  “I got time.”

***

The way Steve looked at it, there were two ways to make the world a better place: you help good people and do good things, or you stop bad people from doing bad things.  

“So that’s why we’re here waiting for Mr. Guntarsson, eh?”  Bucky muttered around the cigarette in his mouth.  “We’re here to stop the bad guy?”  He eyed Steve’s profile, just barely visible in the light of the waxing moon. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard where they glinted from under the pageboy hat he was wearing to hide his blonde hair. 

“That’s right, Buck.  You saw Mrs. Guntarsson’s face on Sunday.  One of these days he’s going to put her in the hospital again and she might not make it out,” Steve said, voice low. He rocked back on his heels, eyes never leaving the door of the bar.  Bucky knew they were both trying to hide their nervousness; this was the first one that they had _planned_ , that they had talked about and decided on where and when and how.  As targets went, Guntarsson was an easy one; the whole neighborhood knew he was a violent drunk, and the neighborhood gossips always clucked their tongues and wondered when he was going to drink himself to death.

Tonight, if Steve and Bucky had anything to say about it. 

It was gone midnight before Guntarsson came stumbling out of the bar, so drunk he practically reeked with alcohol.   Steve met Bucky’s eye with a grimace; another week’s paycheck, down his throat to be pissed away in an alley somewhere while Mrs. Guntarsson tried to figure out how to feed their family.  They followed him silently for a while, waiting for the part in his stumble home where he took a shortcut next to the pier that all the dockworkers knew about but most of the public didn’t.

In the end, for all their planning, the man all but did himself in.  When they were alone, Steve called him out on beating his wife, to which Guntarsson snarled, “what d’ _you_ know about how to handle a woman, ya fucking fa-” and that’s when Steve took a swing.  The man fell backwards, more out of surprise than the force of Steve’s punch, and slipped on the cobblestones.  Bucky made sure his head bounced at least once against the pavement, and while he was stunned, dazedly slurring curses and insults, they both shoved him off the pier.   He thrashed a couple of times in the water before he sank and didn’t come up again.

“Now at least she’ll get her widow’s benefits,” Bucky commented as they strolled away.

“And maybe her kids will stop jumping at their own shadows,” Steve scowled, hands balled into fists in his pockets.   Despite the smooth success of their mission, Bucky could still tell that something was still grinding Steve and gave him the whole walk home to bring it up.

“Alright, spill,” he said when they were safely behind closed doors.  “What’s got you so wound up?”

“He wasn’t even sorry about it, in the end,” Steve muttered, sitting on the bed as he toed off his shoes and socks.  “I feel like at least he should have…I don’t know. Admitted he was wrong or something.”

“What, you wanted him to repent?  I don’t think Guntarsson was what you would call a good Catholic.”  At the mulish look on Steve’s face Bucky sat next to him and elbowed him in the side.  “And if he had apologized and promised never to do it again, then what? We say ok, be good and don’t tell the cops about our little talk?”

“Well, no.  But…I don’t know. I gotta think about it.  Next time we do it differently.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow.  “Oh, so there’s going to be a next time.”

“Well it’s not like he was the only bully or wife beater in Brooklyn,” Steve pointed out.

“So now we’re the protectors of Brooklyn?” Bucky said with amusement. He stood and started peeling out of his clothes, ready to lay down after being on his feet for so long waiting for Guntarrson.

“Cops sure aren’t gonna do anything.  Not for people like us, or the Freemans when someone broke the window to their store, or the Rosenb-”

Bucky silenced him with a kiss.  “I wasn’t arguing with you, Stevie.”

***

Tracking people in Manhattan was substantially different from tracking people in the forests of Germany, so despite their best efforts Steve and Bucky lost the plucky pickpocketing pair in a department store in midtown.

Bucky backtracked a few feet and studied the grating of an air vent.  “I think they went through there,” he said, pointing at the disturbed layer of dust.  “Are we going to keep going after them?”

“No,” Steve said.  “I guess they’ll win this time.  Either they got us by accident, in which case they’re going to give us a wide berth from now on, or they got us on purpose, in which case we’ll find out why soon enough.”

It wasn’t until Bucky was pulling out his wallet to pay for dinner that he found it.  “Guess we know why,” he said ruefully, holding up a glossy black business card between his fingers.  Steve took it from it and studied it, brow furrowed. On one side was a stylized _A_ and on the other an address downtown.

“An invitation?” Steve tapped it thoughtfully against his palm before putting it in his pocket.

“That’s what it looks like.  What do you think they want?” Bucky shoved his credit card into the machine and left it there until it beeped angrily at him to pull it out.  He scrawled his signature and took the tray of their food, packed as tightly as he could manage given that he was trying to fit round plates on a square tray.

“Good question.”  Steve picked up the second tray and followed Bucky to a table.  “Think they just wanna talk?”

“Yeah. Not like, _talk_ talk though.”

“No,” Steve agreed, stealing a waffle fry from Bucky’s plate.   Not that it really mattered what they wanted; whoever these people were, they couldn’t possibly have any idea who they were dealing with.  

***

During the war, it didn’t take long for rumors to start spreading about die Hollenhunde, two men, one light and one dark, who stalked the streets and forests of Europe bringing death in their wake.  Soldiers in trenches whispered that to see them was a harbinger of doom, that the devil had deputized them to send the wicked to hell when their time had come.

A Nazi officer dead in his bunk, without a mark on him? _Die Hollenhunde._

Armament factory burned to the ground, no survivors? _Die Hollenhunde._

Squad of soldiers never returned from patrol? _Die Hollenhunde._

Ernim Zola and Johann Shmidt constant felt the hot breath of die Hollenhunde on the back of their necks as they were chased from Hydra base to Hydra base, barely a step ahead of their mysterious but relentless pursuit.  

Then Bucky fell from the train where they finally cornered Zola, and Steve unleashed a whole new level of hell looking for him. Shmidt died slowly, drowning in his own blood while Steve went through his army like a reaper through wheat, finally finding Bucky in the bowels of the mountain stronghold and catching Zola right before he escaped in the getaway car.  Bucky had a very interesting _little talk_ with him about the ethics of nonconsensual body modification and human experimentation before Zola’s weasely little heart gave out.

Between the turmoil of Hydra losing its leaders and best officers and the final death throes of Nazi Germany, die Hollenhunde had plenty of work to keep them busy for the rest of the war.

***

The next morning were back to watching the dirty cops, who were across the street laughing at something on their phones, when Bucky brought it up again. “So when are we going to go to the address?”  He said quietly.  They were on opposite sides of a bus stop, pretending not to know each other, but he knew Steve could hear him even over the ambient noise of the city.

Steve tipped the box of fries over into his palm to get the last ones and tossed them back before he threw the box in the trash.  He didn’t have to ask what Bucky was talking about.  “I thought once we have a chat with this guy tonight we would do some recon.”

Bucky frowned at that but tapped his foot like he was listening to music through the earbuds he was wearing.  “We should probably postpone this project until we figure out why these people want to meet with us, yeah?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Steve raise an eyebrow though for all intents and purposes it appeared like he was studying the bus schedule.  “We’re just going to have a chat with the guy.  Why wait?”

“A chat or a _talk_?” 

“Just a chat, for now.  I think maybe he just had bad luck with a choice of partners.” Bucky just made a thoughtful _hmm_ at that, not very convinced but as ever, willing to follow Steve’s lead.

 

For as much as Steve was all about truth and justice, he was a surprisingly good liar when he wanted to be.  Bucky had thought about that a lot over the years, and he eventually came to the conclusion that when he believed that his lies were for a greater good, he didn’t get the guilty face he got when, for example, he drank the last of the coffee without making more.   One time he asked Steve about it but he just shrugged and chalked it up to his time on the stage.

Tonight was a good example.   Hartley’s was a well-known cop bar, dimly lit with scarred wooden tabletops and a floor that was perpetually slightly sticky.  They weren’t waiting long before the officer they’d been following came inside, greeting the bartender by name with a wide smile.  While they had been waiting for him, sitting in a lonely booth towards the back, Steve had been nursing his beer, thoughts clearly far away (Bucky guessed they were on an address in mid-town).   But as soon as the man hit his cue, Steve’s pensiveness slid away to be replaced with respectful earnestness as he climbed out of the booth to approach the man.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding truly apologetic to be interrupting the off-duty officer’s banal conversation with the pretty bartender.  “Did I hear you say you were with the NYPD?”

Back in the booth, Bucky rolled his eyes.  The guy had only mentioned it half a dozen times, trying to impress the lady behind the bar who probably saw dozens of cops a day come in for drinks.  At the bar, Steve was shaking the man’s hand and offering to buy him a drink.  He gestured back towards Bucky who wiped the disdain off his face to look interested and welcoming.  After a few more minutes of conversation Steve convinced the guy to come over; as they drew closer, Bucky heard Steve mention “oh, we were in the Army” almost bashfully.

“Thank you for your service,” the man - kid, really – said automatically, like saying “bless you” after someone sneezed.   Bucky knew he meant it in a nice way, but the sentiment still made Bucky’s metal hand curl into a fist under the table.  As far as he was concerned, being drafted was still one of the top five worst things to happen to him in his life, and after over ninety years of life that was really saying something.

“Thank you,” Steve said with all appearance of sincerity, like he hadn’t given the Army the big middle finger seventy years ago and never looked back.  “Thank you for _your_ service.”

The cop – Bucky thought his name was Ben – shrugged but his face got a little red.  From what Bucky could tell, he was barely drinking age, probably fresh from the academy.  He wasn’t the first to get a look of Steve’s All American look and get a bit of hero worship.  “I’ve wanted to be a cop since I was a little kid, so.”

“Yeah?” Steve said with interest. Bucky shuffled his feet a little in anticipation; the kid had just given Steve the perfect opening.  “You know, when I was younger I wasn’t much to look at.  Real skinny fellow, lots of health problems.  This one time I got beat up by a buncha creeps-” Bucky smirked into his beer as Steve’s accent got broader; even all these years later, this memory still made Steve mad “-so I went to the cops.  Do you know what they told me?”  Ben took a sip of his beer and shook his head. “They said to buzz off, that a fairy like me was lucky I didn’t get worse.” Steve was staring absently into space as if he didn’t notice the effect his words were having on their drinking partner, who was starting to look a little queasy.   A recent investigation by the New York Times had uncovered emails between NYPD officers mocking protesters of police brutality, saying ‘those [redacted] should be lucky they didn’t get worse.’  No one’s name had been on the emails, but this kid’s poker face was shit.   “That’s when I realized that sometimes you have to take justice for yourself because the system isn’t always going to give it to you.”

“It’s not like that now,” the kid protested weakly.  He wiped his hands on his pants before taking a deep swallow of his beer.

“Isn’t it? What about that cop that killed that young black man the other day? Did you know that he was put on administrative leave while they investigate?” He turned to Bucky to share in his outrage, seemingly unaware that the cop they were talking about had been this kid’s partner until two weeks ago.  “ _Administrative leave._   That’s practically paid vacation!”

Bucky nodded thoughtfully. “We didn’t think that was fair, so we decided to pay that guy a visit.  See if we could have a little talk.” The man they were sitting with went very still.

“Yeah,” Steve said.  “Well, turns out he already felt really bad about what he did.” 

“It’s a shame that he drank himself to death.  But he left a really touching suicide note.” Bucky took a drink of his beer, still pretending not to notice Ben’s growing dismay.

This time it was Steve’s turn to nod. “He had a lot to say about police accountability and the racist culture endemic to the justice system. It was very thoughtful.”

“Oh my God.” Ben went grey and his hand went to his belt out of habit, reaching for his gun even though he was out of uniform. “You killed him.”

“Excuse me, we didn’t lay a finger on him,” Bucky said, offended.  “Newspapers said it was a suicide.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe it was a suicide, Ben?” Steve asked. The kid’s eyes darted towards the exit, but the smile on Steve’s face made it clear that he wouldn’t make it that far if he ran.  The only other people in the bar were a woman wearing headphones and the bartender, who was running a blender as she made some sort of fruity frozen drink. 

Knowing he was trapped seemed to make the kid get his courage.  “I don’t know who in the hell you think you are-“

“We like to think of ourselves as Angels of Justice,” Bucky interrupted, voice deceptively mild. “Dropping in to make people rethink their ways.”  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, letting the officer get a nice long look at his metal arm and hand.

“It makes me very…disappointed, when I find out about people who abuse their power over others and use it to hurt the people they should be protecting.  That not only makes you a bully, but the worst kind of bully.”  Bucky suppressed a shiver at the steely edge in Steve’s voice; it never failed to push all of his buttons when Steve got all self-righteous.  He didn’t have to look to know that Steve’s normally warm blue eyes were as cold and merciless. 

“But you’re not like that, are you, Ben?”  It would probably surprise a lot of people to know that Bucky ended up playing the nice guy in their cat and mouse routine.  Usually because, as the kids said these days, Steve had absolutely No Chill when it came to their little talks.   “He’s not like that,” he said as he turned to Steve. “I got a good feeling about this kid, I think he’s better than that.”

“I think Officer Benjamin Grimes, badge number 89435, will learn to be better because it would be a shame for a promising young officer to find himself the target of investigations of official misconduct with no way out but suicide.  Like his partner did after murdering a teenager.” 

“8943 _6_ ,” Bucky corrected, pulling the kid’s badge out of his pocket and inspecting it.  If possible, the kid went even paler, because his badge was supposed to be safely locked away at his apartment a few blocks away.   He crushed it in his metal hand and dropped the mangled remnant on the table as Steve climbed out of the booth.  “I’m doing you a favor, kid.  Since I’m pretty sure you’ve had to clean at least one person’s blood off of this badge, I’m giving you a chance to get a clean one.”

Bucky caught up to Steve waiting at the corner, hands fisted in his pockets, somehow managing to remind Bucky of the 90 pound firecracker he fell in love with decades ago.   He put a hand on Steve’s shoulder and pulled him close. “Ready to call it a night?” He gave Steve a grin that implied _calling it a night_ wouldn’t immediately involve sleeping.

Steve pulled him into a dark alley in case Ben got any smart ideas about trying to find them and reeled him in close for a kiss, tilting his head and licking in deep like he was taking no prisoners, making a noise deep in his throat when Bucky bit his lip as he drew back.  “Recon first, then let’s finish breaking the couch.”

“Deal.”

They didn’t try to be particularly covert on their approach to the address; tonight they were just two guys out for a walk on a brisk fall evening, crisp leaves kicked up by the wind curling around their feet.   As they turned the corner and realized which building they were looking for, they both came to a stop in surprise.

“Not what I was expecting,” Steve said after a moment, and Bucky could only nod, eyebrows raised.

***

For a brief shining moment on V-E Day Bucky thought that now that the war was over, they could actually go home and he could have a goddamn Coney Island hotdog with mustard and relish instead of yet another bratwurst.  Instead, Mr. Steven Grant “Give Me Justice or I’ll Give You Death” Rogers heard about all of the Nazi military officers and concentration camp guards and politicians who were escaping to South America and just like that Bucky was figuring out how to say “when’s the next boat to Argentina?” in French.

This soon after the war, it wasn’t too hard to find the refugee Germans; they tended to make an impression on the locals even aside from language barrier and the unreasonable demands for unpronounceable food.  The first ones that they found, a man and wife who had both worked as guards at Dachau, died angry and unrepentant.  The third, a senior SS officer, had turned into an unsatisfying execution because Steve had to kill the man quickly before he could raise the alarm.  All of which had left Steve in a foul mood that he refused to talk about, which made Bucky twitchy and grumpy as well.  So as they trekked through the flat barren plains of Argentina to the village where the next target lived, Bucky was ready to punch a bear to get out of listening to more of the pseudo-intellectual garbage that Nazis and Hydra used to justify their atrocities. 

But when they entered the man’s house on the farthest edge of what could be considered the town, they both came to a surprised stop before confronting him.  He was kneeling on the floor, gun in his hand shaking as he tried to gather the courage to turn it on himself.  His house was tiny and sparse, without any of the habitual comforts people tended to surround themselves with, more like a prison cell than a home.  Steve made a noise so quiet only Bucky could have heard it and the look in his eyes was unreadable as he studied the man, an employee of Buchenwald who had fled just before it was liberated.

Then a floorboard squeaked under Steve’s foot as he stepped forward, and at the noise the man surged to his feet and pointed the gun at him. “What are you…”  He trailed off when Bucky stepped out of the darkness to stand next to Steve.

“Do you know who we are?” Steve said gently, taking the gun out of the man’s hands and handing it to Bucky, who crushed the barrel and set it on a table under the window. 

 The man’s eyes were drawn to the reflection of silver moonlight on Bucky’s hand, and he whispered, “ _Die Hollenhunde,_ ” sounding almost relieved.  He fell backward into a chair as if his legs could no longer hold him.

“Yes. Do you know why we’re here?” Steve said gently and came to kneel in front of the man.

“Yes,” the man said, and his eyes welled up with tears. “Retribution.  I’m sorry, so sorry, for everything-”

“I know. _He_ knows,” Steve said, gesturing to the hanging cross that dominated the room.  At a tilt of Steve’s head and a significant look Bucky moved silently around to the back of the man’s chair.  “But now that you’ve repented, you will have to ask God in person whether it was enough to atone for all of your sins.  The souls of the dead demand it. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the man said again.  “Thank you.”  As he bent his head in prayer one last time, Bucky slid his knife between the conveniently exposed vertebrae in the man’s neck and severed the brain stem, killing him instantly.  Bucky watched as Steve caught him as he slumped forward and laid him out on the floor of his tiny home, closing his eyes and crossing his arms across his chest.

They didn’t bother searching the man’s house like they had the last two targets.  They could tell from looking that this man wasn’t hiding any ill-gotten gains, valuables stolen from the people that had been marched inside the death camp with no expectation of ever leaving. 

 “Feel better?” Bucky asked as Steve stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him, taking a deep breath of the night air.  His shoulders were more relaxed than they’d been since they’d stepped foot off the boat in Buenos Aires.

“I was starting to wonder if Germany really was a nation of monsters,” Steve answered, staring up at the expanse of stars above them.      Bucky made a thoughtful noise, wanting to point out that it was easy to think that if you were a monster hunter, but instead he just busied himself cleaning his knife until Steve was ready to go.

***

The building in front of them was a slick, modernistic monstrosity trying and failing to fit in with the gray stone facades of the row houses that occupied most of the rest of the block.  Flower boxes tried to soften the look without much luck.  Bucky could only imagine how much money the building’s owner must have thrown at the city inspectors to get this thing built in this neighborhood.

“What in the hell are two pickpockets doing sending us to a swanky joint like this?”  Steve finally said out loud.  This was an old enough neighborhood that the trees muffled the orange glow of the sodium street lights, letting them loiter just at the edges of the shadows without looking suspicious about it.  Bucky slid his hand into the pocket of Steve’s coat and Steve squeezed it, turning slightly to brush his lips over Bucky’s temple.

“Figure they are like those street urchins in Dickens novels? Or Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars? ‘Is Nibs asked that you pop ‘round for a chat, guv’nor,” Bucky said in his best impression of a Cockney accent.  “Maybe this is where their Fagin lives.”

The look Steve turned on him was priceless but he decided not to comment on Bucky’s randomly specific knowledge of 19th century British literature.  Bucky decided to preserve the mystery and not tell him that it came from old _Wishbone_ episodes he’d found on the internet after spending a few sleepless nights watching PBS _._   Steve shifted his weight and Bucky knew they probably weren’t going to be breaking any couches soon, because now Steve was Interested.

He blew out a silent sigh of resignation, too used to him by now to get aggravated.  “Let’s go,” he said, tugging on Steve’s hand to cross the street.  “I know you won’t be able to think of anything else until we do this.”

The curl of Steve’s lips as he followed Bucky up to the frosted glass door of the building was a little sheepish and self-deprecating, but he didn’t argue.   Bucky studied the front of the building, looking for a doorbell or something to let the people inside know that there was someone outside, and was raising his hand to knock on the door – bulletproof plexiglass, he noted with interest – when a smooth voice with a light British accent interrupted him.

“Hello, gentlemen.  How can I help you?”

Steve arched an eyebrow and pulled the business card out of his pocket, holding it up.  “Someone gave us this, I’m assuming it was an invitation.” Bucky finally noticed the discreet speaker set into the doorframe and wondered if the camera was there as well.

“Ah, yes.  We’ve been expecting you.”  With that, there was the loud sound of the door unlocking, and as they pulled it open Bucky noticed that the frame of the door was metal, not wood, and that the hole for the latches were almost a full finger deep.   He doubted that even with his metal arm that he’d be able to get back out this door if it locked behind them, and the thought made him uneasy.

The inside of the building didn’t really match the outside; Bucky had been expecting a lot of steel and glass and white, with shaggy rugs and uncomfortable looking furniture, but instead it was clearly someone’s home, lived-in and slightly worn.  Blankets and pillows were tossed haphazardly on couches and a stack of books were leaning against an overstuffed armchair with a pair of glasses on top. 

After a moment a man came bounding up the stairs, brown eyes alighting on them with interest as he cleaned his hands, smelling sharply of grease and sweat.   “Hey, glad you guys decided to come by,” he said, holding his hand out for them each to shake.  “You must have been pretty confused.  Please, follow me.”   

Whoever this guy was, Bucky figured he couldn’t know that much about them because he seemed to have no reservations about turning his back to them as he led them deeper into the house.  They went down a narrow hallway and emerged in a spacious kitchen with a breakfast nook, where the pickpocket was sitting at the table, leaning back in a chair with two legs off the floor. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and in the other there was a flash of silver as a coin appeared and disappeared between his fingers.  Despite his casual pose, the wariness in his eyes as he studied them told Bucky that this guy trusted them a whole lot less than the man who was still talking while he reached into a cabinet for cups.  Next to the pickpocket, leaning against the wall, was a compact redhead that must have been his backup.  She had one hand on her hip and the other was tapping out a tattoo against her thigh; perhaps a nervous tic, but Bucky bet otherwise because her eyes were far older than her face.

“So you’ve already met Clint and Natalia,” the man said as he handed them each a cup of coffee. Steve took his, polite as ever, but Bucky waved his away and put his hands in his jacket pockets, his right fingers brushing the knife hidden in the lining.  “My name is Tony Stark.  We invited you here because, well, I got news that two guys were watching some of the police officers in our district with what they described as’unusual interest’ so of course we decided to holy shit,” Tony said suddenly. “My father _wasn’t_ craz-ohhhhhhhh Christ.” 

Bucky frowned at the non sequiturs and followed the man’s eyes to his left wrist.  Putting his hands in his pockets had shoved Bucky’s sleeve up and the barest sliver of his metal arm could be seen.  Bucky’s eyes flew up to meet Tony’s and here was another person who didn’t have a poker face worth shit.  He could read almost every thought of Tony’s as a cascading series of revelations crashed through his nimble mind and emotions chased themselves across his face, so many that even his mouth couldn’t keep up so Tony ended up just staring at them in a stunned silence.

“We’ve been made,” Bucky muttered in German.

Steve had noticed the same thing that Bucky did. “Yeah. Who is-”

“Stark? Gotta be Howard’s kid,” Bucky answered, keeping the sudden alarm he felt from showing on his face, which he kept relaxed in a look of polite confusion mixed with an appropriate amount of suspicion.  Meanwhile Tony was blinking rapidly as he tried to pick up his train of thought where it had been derailed as he realized just who exactly was standing in front of him.

“Ah.”  

Bucky knew they were both thinking the same thing at that point.  It wouldn’t be the first time that they’d had to kill to protect their identities.  With three people in the room there was too high a likelihood that someone would escape, so they had to play it cool for now.  Tony’s stammered words washed over them, something about working together to protect the community but Bucky knew mob talk when he heard it.  He tried to nod at the right spots while his mind was racing in a completely different direction.  “Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

“Hey, don’t kill me,” Tony said in German.  “Hear me out before you start planning my demise.”

“We’re listening.” Steve put his untouched cup of coffee down and crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Look, it’s a bit of a miracle that someone hasn’t figured out the truth about you two earlier.  With the way that facial recognition software is coming, it’s not going to be long before they do – any street camera, an unintentional cameo in someone’s photo, and boom, your faces will be everywhere.”  Steve was scowling, the way he did every time that Bucky made a similar observation.  “But I can stop it. If it’s on the internet, I can find it first and I’ll be able to keep you guys under wraps indefinitely.”

“Yeah? How?” Bucky challenged, and Tony made a face at him.

“Were you not listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

Bucky opened his mouth to speak but Steve beat him to it.  “Say we believe you.  What’s in it for you?”

“Well, first, not dying.  Second, judging from the fear of God you put into poor Officer Grimes, I figured maybe we are kind of on the same side.” Steve and Bucky must have been making identical skeptical looks at that.  “Look, I don’t want dirty cops either in our city either. Well,” he amended, “not the ‘beating up and killing innocent people’ kind of dirty.  I do want the ‘looking the other way when paid enough money’ kind of dirty, or the ‘fair exchange of information for cash’ kind of dirty.  Because that’s just business.  What happened to that kid was murder.  Anyway, you know, maybe every now and then you can help out with business matters, because there are definitely times where having a pair of intimidating guys like you around could make business go a little smoother.  You’d be paid, of course,” he added, like that was a thing they cared about.

“We’re going to need to think about this,” Steve said flatly after a moment.

“Of course, of course.” Tony scratched the back of his head and cleared his throat.  “Just, you know, keep in mind that this entire conversation has been recorded and if anything happens to me that seems in the least suspicious, it will be on the internet in seconds.”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”

“No. Well, I mean, I guess it is if you are still thinking about killing me.  It’s more like…a warning.  I’m not going to make you work with me if you aren’t interested.  But it would be a shame if our interests were to come into a conflict, don’t you think?”

 

“So you seem like you’re actually going to go through with this,” Bucky commented over breakfast the next day.  The meeting with Tony had pretty much killed the mood so when they got home they had just pretended to sleep until sleep actually came in the small hours of the morning.  He didn’t really see what the big deal was – they had weathered a lot together, and if their faces became splashed all over the news they could just change their look and move out of the country for a while; it’s not like their Spanish was _that_ rusty.   Or they could just trust the guy and move on with life, whatever. But he could tell that something was worrying Steve, and as usual, Steve wasn’t going to be the first to bring it up.

Steve’s jaw was set and he was eating his food mechanically, thoughts clearly far away.  He didn’t respond at first, but after a few moments he looked up.  When he met Bucky’s eyes his gaze was cold and determined.  “Stark has money.  People with money have access.”

“Access,” Bucky repeated.  He set his fork down and sat back in his chair, feeling cold crawl slowly through his veins as fear curdled the food in his stomach.  “You want to go after Pierce,” he said hollowly.  “You son of a bitch.”

Steve just looked back down at his plate.

***

Bucky and Steve don’t talk about the 80s.

Steve still has nightmares about how Bucky was there one second and gone the next, and Bucky still refuses to say what happened to him in the eight years he was missing.  The only thing Steve had ever gotten out of him was a name, Alexander Pierce.  For his part, Steve doesn’t like to think about what he did while he was trying to find Bucky, so he certainly doesn’t mention it.   They don’t talk about the scars, or the nightmares, or the way Bucky’s metal arm was a little bit different afterwards, or the way Steve takes forever to wash his hands, cleaning under the nails obsessively.   

Steve never says that of all the desperate, unpleasant things Steve did when Bucky was missing, he’s going to do all of the worst of them again when he finally gets his hands on Pierce.

So it’s not that they don’t think about it, they just don’t talk about it.

***

Bucky was humming under his breath, minding his own business and cleaning his weapons stash when Natalie sat down across from him.  This made Bucky pause for a number of reasons, not the least of them being that he was sitting at his kitchen in his and Steve’s _secret_ top floor apartment.  But after a moment he just kept cleaning, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of seeing him react. 

“Tony doesn’t know you two like to kill people,” she said abruptly, and that finally made Bucky look up.  “It would probably be best if it stayed that way, don’t you think?”

He looked her in the eye as he put his .45 back together, trying to formulate a response.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said finally.  Seemed safest when he had no idea what she was trying to accomplish with this bizarre conversation.

“Don’t you?” She pulled out her phone and held it up for Bucky to see.   On it was the headline of a news article – “Freshman NYC Police Officer Found Dead,” and underneath the first line of text read, “On Thursday Morning, Officer Benjamin Grimes was discovered in his apartment-” and that was as far as he got before Natalie pulled her phone back.

“It’s a shame to hear about the kid, but we wouldn’t do that.”  _We didn’t do that,_ is what he meant.  

“Are you sure? Where was Steve Wednesday night?”

“It doesn’t matter.  Neither one of us had anything to do with that,” he said emphatically.  He stood up from the table and gestured towards the window, because he knew good goddamn well she hadn’t come through the front door.  “You can leave now.”

“I believe that _you_ believe that,” Natalie said, coming to her feet.  “But I haven’t trusted you two from the beginning and I’m warning you right now that Steve-”

“You can stop there,” Bucky bit out, voice cold.  Natalie’s lips thinned and her brown eyes were stormy.   “I have known Steve for longer than you _and_ Clint _and_ Tony have been alive, _put together._ There is nothing about Steve that _you_ need to warn me about.”

He stayed where he was until he was sure she was gone, until he couldn’t hear her pulse or smell the faint trace of soap on her skin.  After a moment he picked up his phone and typed “ _where were-“_   before he shook his head and deleted it.

***

“I think we should take a break,” Bucky announced one day as they were pouring lime on a body before they buried it deep in the Great Dismal Swamp.  “Just get away for a while.”

Steve raised an eyebrow skeptically.  “Bucky, we travel all the time.  We’ve lived in three different cities in the past five years.”

“Yeah, but we should go to a place for fun, not for, you know, work,” he said, gesturing at the body as he picked up a shovel.  “I feel like we do nothing but this these days.”

Even Steve had to admit they’d been having a lot of _talks_ with people lately.  It was 1968 and it felt like the country was a rabid dog intent on destroying itself out of rage and hate.  Every day Steve watched the news and each time it seemed like something inside him broke a little more, his heart growing heavier from the weight of the world.   “What did you have in mind?” Steve said eventually, pulling some leaves and underbrush over to cover the freshly turned dirt.

“Oh, I don’t know.  Someplace warm.  Tropical.  I hear Costa Rica is nice.”

But they didn’t go to Costa Rica, they went to Alabama. 

Sometimes Bucky wonders what, if anything, would have been different if they _had_ gone to Costa Rica.

***

As the months passed, Bucky hoped that working with Tony and his team had distracted Steve from Pierce, though he knew in his gut that it hadn’t, not even a little bit.  As a result things with Steve were good but in a fragile way, a way that made Bucky feel like he was always holding his breath waiting for the hammer to fall.  Meanwhile New York grew breathtakingly cold and grey, the blue of the sky on the rare cloudless days thin and distant.  Snow was beautiful for the first twenty minutes before it turned to dirty slush and made his socks wet. 

Bucky hated New York winters.

Then one day Steve got up to go for his run as usual, but when he came to give Bucky a kiss on the head he said “I’m going to be late tonight, don’t wait up.”

Bucky felt his stomach drop but he forced a grin on his face. “Yes, Captain,” he said, saluting smartly and pretending not to notice when Steve’s echoing grin didn’t reach his eyes.

Once the door closed, Bucky spent hours frozen on the couch, trying to decide what to do. Finally he picked up his phone. “You might have been right,” he said when Natasha answered.  “I need all hands to keep Steve from doing something stupid.”

In the end, by the time they tracked him down it was too late.

“Jesus Christ, Steve,” Bucky said, stomach turning at the carnage in front of him.  The air was heavy and metallic with the smell of blood and viscera.  Behind him, he heard Tony gag and Clint made a wounded noise as they backed away from Steve and the remains of Alexander Pierce.  “Goddammit.  We talked about this,” Bucky sighed. Turning, he shot Natasha, Clint, and Tony in quick succession, _bang bang bang_ , while they were still busy staring at Steve with horror.  The shell casings rang on the concrete floor as their bodies slumped to the ground.

Steve glanced up from where he was wiping the blood off his hands.  “He died too quickly,” Steve said calmly, voice remote. “I forget how fragile they are.”

“They?” Bucky asked as he approached, mindful of the mess on the floor.  

“Humans.”

“You know I don’t like it when you talk like that.” Bucky rolled his shoulders uncomfortably and busied himself with the kerosene Steve had sitting in the corner, pouring it on and around Pierce’s body.

Steve tossed the dirty rag to the side.  “Really, Buck? We’re pushing a hundred and we look like we’re thirty.  You know we can do things than no one else can. Feels like saying we’re human is a bit disingenuous.” 

“I guess.”  Bucky came up to stand next to Steve and forced himself to look at what was left of Pierce.  After a moment, Steve pulled a matchbox from his pocket and lit one of the matches, tossing it on the kerosene.

“We were chosen by God for our mission.  After all, what are the odds that of all of the people on the planet, you and I would both get a version of the serum, months and half a world apart?” 

“I know, I know.”  Bucky looked away from the glittering reflection of the fire in Steve’s eyes with a shiver. "So did he ever apologize or anything?"

Steve snorted. "No. He died with 'Heil Hydra' on his lips."

"What lips?"

"You know what I mean."

After a moment of staring at the fire, Bucky jerked his head towards the bodies near the door.  "So we're going to need to get out of town pretty damn quick now.  Where do you wanna go?"

"We never did go to Costa Rica, did we?"

Oh thank God, someplace warm. "No, we sure didn't."


End file.
